Player One
by siqwithaQ
Summary: Ace is stuck in a game that he can't ever beat and didn't ever want to take part in. Every save point is futher back than the last, and he seems to be stuck playing on instant death mode.


**Warning:** If you aren't someone who can handle themes like death, gore, and sex (_**non**_**-**explicit, really more just implied), then this story is not for you.  
Also, I'm rating this T because I think that's what it deserves, but I'm not sure, so if you think it needs an M then please tell me. If a lot of people think it needs an M, I'll change it, because I don't want to get in trouble for underrating a story.

**. . .**

_One of the hardest decisions you'll ever face in life is choosing to walk away or try harder._

**. . .**

**Player 1 Start**

Magma, as a fact, burned hotter than fire, but he had never had a chance to experience such first hand before now.

Currently, the fact seemed more real, more dire, more shocking than it ever had. The intolerable heat of magma was vastly different from the relatively safe warmth of flame, and it was pressing into his ribs and close to his lungs.

He was pretty sure they weren't punctured, or talking would be even harder than it was and it was pretty hard already; the best he could manage was a raspy whisper that his little brother fell silent to hear. It still hurt him to speak, but only a little, and nothing unbearable, and he _needed_ to say this, he needed Luffy to understand how much his big brother loved him and how glad he was to be loved in return.

His heart was courteous enough to keep beating long enough for one last thank you, and then it was gone.

**Game Over**

**Play Again?**

Ace's mind was clearer than it had been in a long time, but at the same time the confusion threatened to kill him.

He was on Banaro again.

But… he had died.

And now he was on a roof, on Banaro, watching Teach and his crew as they examined a bounty poster.

He had seen this already. This had already happened.

He knew so with certainty, as he remembered the lead up to the fight that stuck him in Impel Down in absolute detail. And Teach was planning to go after Luffy, and Ace would never, _ever_ let that be something his precious brother had to go through. And, well, even if the situation made absolutely no sense, he should just go with it. Maybe it would become clear somewhere along the way. For now, he should just think of it as a second chance.

If he walked away now, or thought carefully before he did anything, he might have a chance of saving them both and avenging Thatch simultaneously.

Still, Teach wanted Luffy. He wanted to _hurt_ angelic, darling little Luffy, and that was not something Ace could ignore. So he made his presence known in the same way he had the first time around.

The fight ensued, so similar to the first time and yet so very different, since Ace expected what was coming and was prepared. The fight was longer than the first one had been, and Ace sustained less damage while Teach sustained more. He though he might actually have a hope of winning, when he was caught up in Teach's power draining darkness once more. He tried to remove himself from the grip, but Teach held strong and he only succeeded in a squirming struggle that looked much like a child having a tantrum.

He had no mobility, and no logia, and no hope of surviving when someone he couldn't see, likely a sniper for the goddamn bastard, took advantage of his weakness and shot him through the chest.

He couldn't pay attention to much, as he was pretty sure his lung was indeed pierced this time, but he tried his hardest to focus when he felt someone taking his pulse.

"He's dying."

"Well, that's no good. He's not worth nearly as much if he's dead." A rational assessment, as the World Government loved to hold public executions for criminals of his level, but Ace felt his anger spike nonetheless. "We might as well go for the rookie, too, then. Show them what we're really made of, and I'll be made a Warlord for sure. Zehahaha! Grab the body; if they're really brothers it's sure to make the straw-hat brat go crazy."

His hatred for Teach reached an all time high just as his life blinked away for the second time.

**Game Over**

**Play Again?**

When he woke again, he was on the Moby Dick.

His eyes had opened to the familiar ceiling of the infirmary, and he prayed it had only been a crazy dream. But when he hesitantly raised the sheet to check, apprehensive of the ease with which he could move his arms, there was no hole, neither from a magma fist nor a bullet.

And he looked younger.

Ace acquainted with himself well enough to know that this was not the body he had died in. It was more like the one he had had when he was eighteen. He was younger.

He was getting younger.

_Why_ was he getting younger?

Briefly, it crossed his mind that most sane people would not occupy themselves with frivolous wonderings of why they were _younger_ post-resurrection, but it seemed like the most pressing question at the time. He was too busy examining his new (old?) body when Doctor Selma entered, shooting him a dubious look.

"You're well enough to go, if you really want," she informed him, but she sounded sceptic of her own words. "Don't know how far you'll get, though."

He nodded warily and attempted to stand, half-expecting movement to be more difficult than it turned out to be as he walked shakily to the exit. Outside, he saw Thatch, who was undoubtedly there to check on him as he always had been when Ace got himself hurt, and—

_Oh, fucking hell, he's alive!_

"You okay, there? Oyaji hit you pretty hard." Ace couldn't really find a way to respond through his shock, and Thatch lifted a brow as he merely gaped. "You didn't knock your head, did you?"

His jaw shut with an audible clack. "Yes! I mean, no! I mean, I didn't hit my head, no. I'm totally fine. The doctor even said I was fine enough to leave, so…"

Thatch's concern turned into a grin. "Well! I think that's the most I've heard you say all at once since I met you. Does this mean you're opening up to me? I'm touched."

The remark puzzled him, but then he realised that, in his early days on the Moby, he barely spoke two words to anyone. If Thatch though a few short sentences from him were unusual, he must have only just begun his attempts on Oyaji's life recently.

Well, he'd got the whole 'figuring out the point in time he'd landed' thing down, now all he had to figure out was why the hell he went further backwards every time he died. _It made no goddamn __**sense**__!_

He had died. And then he had found himself in front of Teach, right before a fight that had already happened, only to die again. And now he was on the Moby Dick, before he had even joined the crew. He didn't understand. Was it some sort of second chance? Was it a trial? Was he being hurtled into his own past as some sort of test to see how he would live his life with foreknowledge of his death?

And how _would _he live? Would he change things? He could probably avoid the entire war if he told Thatch everything right now. He could join his family sooner, and not take a hundred days to realise how pointless it would be not to.

But then, it wouldn't be the same. His relationship with the crew wouldn't have developed the same way, and they might view him differently without having seen first hand his stubbornness and determination. Could it be better to just repeat things the same way?

He might have been thinking for a minute, or an hour, or more than that, but by the time he took note of his surroundings he and Thatch were on the deck, looking over the railing at the night sky. Thatch, apparently, had been waiting patiently through his silence.

"You back on Earth yet?"

"Yeah."

Thatch scratched his eyebrow and looked at him with that same 'I'm-curious-but-I'll-hold-back-and-try-not-to-pry ' look that Ace remembered so well, and _stop it already, Thatch, you're giving me nostalgia pains. _"Don't suppose you feel like talking about whatever it is."

Did he? "…No, not really."

"…Alright. I'll leave you to your privacy, if that's what you want." Thatch turned away and began to head back below decks. Just before he disappeared through the door, he threw over his shoulder, "Just know you're going to wind up in a bad way if you keep doing this."

Ace sank to his knees with a sigh and fell asleep under the stars.

When he awoke, he was thankfully still in the same place he had fallen asleep this time. Which meant that the whole situation was a little more real than it was before, having a sense of continuity.

And he wondered again.

Join the crew _now_?

Or... not?

He wasn't sure which would be better long term. He figured that, while he was working that out, he might as well continue the way he had the first time, because at least he had proof of concept on that option.

He had never expected that he would have to plan a murder attempt again, and certainly not one on Oyaji, but, well, things in his life didn't often go the way they were predicted and he should have learned to deal with that by now.

He knew it would be pointless to try to hold back for Oyaji's benefit, as the aging man really didn't need any help to dispatch a youngster like Ace. And when later that day, Oyaji pitched him into the ocean after he ventured a go at taking the man's head, he wasn't in the least bit surprised.

The thing that surprised him was that no one dove in to save him.

He knew that was wrong, that someone should have jumped to get him by now, because they _knew_ he was a fruit user and he would drown if no one came. They had always jumped in after him before, hadn't they?

The water made quick work of crawling down his throat and filling his lungs, and he felt almost as if he was being stabbed through the stomach by the feeling. His ears were throbbing from the water pressure, and just before his eyes finally shut, he had the mind to question whether or not the hand he saw reaching out to him was a hallucination.

**Game Over**

**Play Again?**

He gained awareness standing up with his eyes already open. Something warm was in his arms and pressed against his chest, which he quickly realised was Luffy.

Luffy pulled back from the hug, and although it occurred to Ace that he could breathe again, he found his body couldn't be bothered to when he saw how _young_ his little brother was. He couldn't have been older than — fourteen? Thirteen? Ace didn't recall him being so _short_ ever in his life.

Midget-Luffy grinned at him. "You ready?"

Ace had no idea what he was ready for but he was ready anyway. He nodded.

Wee-Luffy's grin took an ever-so-slightly melancholic turn. "I'll miss you, Nii-chan. Happy birthday."

And then he turned around to see the open sea, only then noticing the dock beneath their feet. He was seventeen today for the second time, he recognised, and Toy-Sized-Luffy would be fourteen five months from then, in May. And he was expected to set sail. _Right now._

Out of all the times he could have found himself, he was least prepared for this one. There were so many options to take and each one would lead to a completely different life.

He could do as he did the first time, and live through a predictable journey with little to no real surprises. It would be boring, but he had been happy where he had gotten to, and it wouldn't be overly hard to find and join Oyaji's crew again.

But of course, he knew from experience that three years' separation from his brother did nothing good for his own happiness, especially around the new years.

If he tried hard enough, he might be able to convince Miniature-Luffy to go to sea with him right then and there, though it might turn out to be less of a coercion than an abduction. But this Tiny-Luffy wasn't nearly old enough, strong enough, or experienced enough to set out into the world quite yet.

So he could continue to wait on the island for Little-Luffy to just be regular Luffy, and get to see his brother take his last steps of growing up in a way he never had before. They could have set out together, though Ace could never be captain because Luffy would be adamant that the Pirate King had to be his own captain and Ace wouldn't be able to refuse him. The idea was sorely tempting…

If he chose anything even a little different from his first life, there was little chance of him encountering his devil fruit ever again, as it had been a one-in-a-million chance in the first place. It might have been best to suffer the repetition. But the thought of experiencing that lonely time between leaving his brother and joining his family all over again put a chill in his bones and a stone in his throat.

"I'll stay," rushed from his lips the second he had the thought.

Dwarfish-Luffy blinked at him from under the brim of his straw hat. "But don't you want to be a pirate?"

"I do," Ace assured, "but I want to stay, with you, even more."

His brother gave him a look that clearly stated how ridiculous he sounded. "You're my brother, it doesn't matter how far apart we are," he said, as if it were the most simple thing in the world and held all the answers to every question that had ever been asked. "Besides, if you wanted to stay together, I can just go with you…"

"You're too young. I can wait. We can sail together when you're seventeen — I won't even ask to be captain!"

Miniscule-Luffy paused for a fraction of a moment, then gave him a fondly amused smile, as if Ace were a rather clumsy puppy that had been allowed to frolic through the kitchen. "We promised Sabo we would go to sea by the time we were seventeen. Sabo wouldn't be too happy if you forgot that for no good reason."

_But it is a good reason,_ he wanted to argue, _it's the best reason._ But Itty-Bitty-Luffy had already herded him onto the small boat, and he considered it pointless to protest.

So he sat quietly while his boat was pushed into the water, and fell asleep to the rocking of the waves once the island was out of sight. He never noticed that, during his conversation with Luffy, he had forgotten to load his barrels of provisions onto the boat.

When he awoke, there was no land on the horizon, and he was hungry.

Days passed, and even after sailing nearly every direction he could think of — nearly, because he was yet to try upwards — land escaped him. The emptiness in his stomach had first gotten easier to bear, before increasingly incessant, and safe food and drinking water remained safely beyond his reach.

He wondered if the purpose of this backwards journey was not a second chance, nor a trial, nor anything else he had meditated on before, but a new kind of torture, to give him a chance to make a decision that would be ultimately pointless before enduring a slow and painful death of some new creatively twisted fashion.

Starving, alone at sea, was yet the most prolonged of all.

He was no longer tallying how many times the sun had risen and set, and perhaps he should have been, because then at least the counting could serve as a distraction from the sounds of his gut. As it was, he had little else to think of besides _why, why on Earth_ was he in this odd, backwards loop? He found no answer in his ponderings, delirious from heat and hunger.

His thoughts slowed, and finally halted, when they could go on no more. A small fishing vessel found his unknown and insignificant body, adrift in the foam, shortly thereafter.

**Game Over**

**Play Again?**

For probably the first time since his death, Ace found himself at a point in his life that held absolutely no special meaning to him. He was inside the walls of Goa, and Luffy, who must have been twelve or so, was walking before him as he trailed behind.

Faintly, something rung in the back of his mind, and he felt that this day might have had some small significance on whatever scale, yet he hadn't bothered to remember what that significance was.

Whatever it could be, he was about to take some choice that would cost him his life. The pattern was predictable. He was certain he would die, for no matter what he did the world would find a way to kill him.

But, once again, Luffy was there with him.

And he thought that anything the world had in store for him couldn't be so bad, if it saved Luffy from the same fate like it had the first time. But if it was a pointless death, like it had been since his backwards loop began, he would curse the sky and the world and any god that happened to look upon him for making his brother grieve for him when the boy was still so young.

The walk seemed innocent enough, with Luffy pointing out various things that caught his eye with a steady frequency, but maybe they had taken the wrong street, or walked too slowly or too quickly, because a hand grabbed them suddenly and pulled them into an empty warehouse that Ace _knew_ he had never seen before.

Then something pierced the soft of his wrist, and his veins ran cold, and he barely heard Luffy whimper before he lost consciousness.

When his eyelids, though still heavy, lifted, he was in chains. It was rather a similar position to the one they had had him in at Impel Down, and for a moment he thought he was back there, and that he had dreamed all his various deaths out of desperation and a sense of impending doom.

But in front of him a group of raggedly dressed men came into focus, something completely usual of a sight in Goa yet far harder to come by in the sixth level of the prison, and he realised with horror that even if it wasn't real he still had to experience it, and that Luffy was bound and slung over one of the men's shoulders carelessly.

They were bad tempered and had a grudge against Ace, these men, as the bits and pieces of their conversation he could pick up showed. He was almost glad they were on the other side of the room, as they had not yet noticed his wakefulness, but he was predominantly angry, for they still had poor little Luffy unconscious and on the shoulder of a man who, Ace noted with disgust, had a hand rubbing the poor boy in a place it really shouldn't have been.

That was when the men noticed him alert and came over, and one of them had begun to gloat that they had gotten their hands on somelittle thing called sea stone, had he ever heard of it? And yes, he had, and he knew what it did, but he didn't know why it pleased them so much when he was no longer (not yet?) a logia user, but then _oh, god,_ because Luffy had been rubber for five years now.

They slapped Luffy awake and stripped him of all but his bindings. Ace tried, _tried_ to free himself and help, _stop them,_ but, still used to an adult body, overestimated his own strength, and the chains kept him still.

_Oh,_ and it hurt. Luffy was screaming, and sobbing, and bleeding, and Ace couldn't do anything. He was forced to watch his innocent baby brother being _used_ like a toy, crying, _Ace, help me! Stop them! Please! Please, please, Ace! Please! ACE!_

But

there

was

nothing

he

could

do,

and

the first gunshot of the night was the final thing his innocent baby brother ever heard. They kicked the limp body to his feet and he corrected his past self; no, Teach was not the one person he hated most of all, it was these horrible, horrible people and their sick, sick thirst for revenge.

His limbs were numb but his heart definitely wasn't. It was possibly the harshest pain he had ever felt, looking down at that usually cheerful face frozen in an expression of desperate fear, and when the chains were released from his wrists he fell to his knees and pulled Luffy, precious Luffy, into his arms with no mind to the boy's bloody, naked state.

Something clicked inside him at the same time something clicked near his ear — _the gun_, his memory supplied — and he thought he might have thrown a fist, which he had to reprimand himself for, because it meant that at some point he had dropped Luffy to do so and left him on the ground.

_Unforgiveable_.

He wasn't entirely sure whom he meant by that.

When the adrenaline finally began to wear off, he was aware of one last thing — another click of the pistol, and he couldn't say he knew whether the hand that held the gun to his head was his enemy's or his own.

**Game Over**

**Play Again?**

Fire was the first thing he saw.

Really, he heard it first, as his eyes had been closed, but it was a sound he was intimately familiar with and it was almost comforting. _Almost_.

But his eyes opened and his head was hanging low on his neck, low enough that he had a very good view of the ropes around his infinitesimally small chest. When in the world had he ever been so small?

"Ace, _please,_" Luffy's voice, tiny and young, sobbed from behind him. He tensed at the words repeated once again, and more than once too many. "It's too hot!"

The fire — the fire of Grey Terminal, ten years ago. _Right now._

His home, his world was burning _burning BURNING_ around him for the second time, but all he could think of was Luffy _still alive _at his back and the relief that came with it. That blissful knowledge carried him through as he sawed through the ropes just the same way he remembered and took the still-alive-still-crying Luffy by the hand and outside into the inferno.

"It's too hot," Luffy would sniffle at intervals. "It's too hot!"

Did Luffy really use to be this… easily upset? No wonder he used to get angry with the kid all the time. The only reason he wasn't getting snappish now was that the elation of Luffy being alive had given him almost limitless patience.

_Almost,_ because Bluejam had just _threatened Luffy_ and he snapped just like he always would have. The fight was even easier than he remembered and Dadan's sudden appearance did nothing to detract from that. Luffy was taken to safety by the gang, and he was finally able to relax — but only a little, because it just wouldn't do to let his guard down during a fight. He had made that mistake too many times already.

And Bluejam was down. Ace had a seeping bit of suspicion in him — he knew he would die soon. He had almost thought Bluejam would kill him, but he had been mistaken. If he surveyed the surrounding area, the most obvious way for him to die here was by flame.

But what if he refused to go back? What if he never let Dadan make a way through the fire, or at least, never followed her? It would be a simple thing to do, but still, the fire could get him anyway. Would it be worth it?

_Who knew?_ And who cared? Ace certainly didn't. If death really wanted him it could have had him however many times he had died already, but it hadn't. So, he thought, it might be fine just to do whatever the hell he wanted and see what happened.

Surprisingly, the flame ebbed away before it killed him. He and Dadan had stayed within the Terminal overnight and had somehow managed to avoid what seemed like certain, imminent death.

But something he had never known he learned the very next morning; the soldiers had been ordered to shoot and kill survivors.

As he scowled to himself for falling victim to death-by-bullet for the third time, he knew he was bleeding out. One of the soldiers had a foot holding his head to the ground, not that he could lift it either way, right over his ear. He could still vaguely hear them, though; not much of their actual conversation, but he caught particular words thrown around, like 'trash,' and 'worthless,' and 'demon.'

In his last moment he wondered what happened to Dadan, and hoped that Luffy, wherever he was, would be okay. Then he knew no more.

**Game Over**

**Play Again?**

Words — "trash, worthless, demon" — he knew he had heard them somewhere else. He couldn't place exactly where.

_Here._

He might have been anywhere between five and ten years old. It had been such a common sight to him when he was that age that it wasn't easy to place on a timeline. The men were laughing, ignoring him, and he could tell by the way his hands were tightening into themselves that he was on the edge of throwing a fist.

He told himself, _that would be stupid. Don't go rushing into your next death._ But then he saw something familiar.

He was younger, he could tell, younger by a good decade or so, which meant Ace must be only five or six years old. But even though he looked different, Ace recognised that ugly face easily as the bastard who had had Luffy slung over his shoulder, one hand rubbing the poor boy's…

All of a sudden he was aware that he had started something of a blood bath. Really, it was more of the usual bar fight, but it really seemed like there was more blood than usual. He didn't know whose it was but he hoped it wasn't his.

Unfortunately, though the bastard was worse off at the end of the fight, it appeared that quite a good measure of the blood had been his own, which was worrying when his body was so small, without a great deal of blood inside it in the first place — surely that much blood loss would be dangerous.

He couldn't really feel his legs for some reason. They weren't working very well and he had to drag himself away with only his arms.

The farther he went, the more numb his arms felt. There was a trail of blood leading up to his six-year-old body that was startlingly thick. Shouldn't the bleeding have slowed by now? But there was just as much as there had been at the start.

The trail was so brightly coloured compared to the ground beneath him, which was grey, and he simply looked at it for a while, because the contrast was rather interesting to his dazed mind. He stared for so long, and the colours began to blur into each other, and then fade. Then it was black.

He was still conscious, even if his eyes and limbs weren't working. He was sure he would look dead to anyone who cared to glance at him, what with the long stream of blood leading up to his still, most likely pale form. Breathing was a laborious task, and his heartbeat felt like a trapped hummingbird trying to escape the cage of his ribs. Refusing to give up hope — the last thing he had — he wondered what he would do if he somehow miraculously survived.

He wondered where Sabo was. If he was six or so, then he should already know Sabo, right? The thought of seeing him for the first time in ten years was positively exhilarating. If he lived long enough to be treated he would make it a point to find him immediately. Every point in time he had been thrown back to had been after Sabo's death, or his separation from Ace and Luffy, so he hadn't had the chance to see him again.

But now, he was right in the time frame to see Sabo again. He didn't want to die again without ever reuniting, for if he went any further back he would be in a time before Sabo had ever met him, when he was still living with his so-called family.

"Shit! Who the hell's been bleeding this much?"

"Is that a _kid_?"

He tried to smile but couldn't muster the strength to lift the corners of his mouth. If he ever saw Sabo again, he knew exactly what he would sa—

**Game Over**

**Play Again?**

Damn. He _definitely_ had no way to see Sabo now, because he was still on Baterilla. But at least he wasn't really thinking about that, because he was too busy thinking about his mother.

She was beautiful, and warm, and soft, and he really did have her freckles, didn't he? Hers looked just the same as his. His eyes — which looked just like hers, he knew now — were drawn to the vibrant flower prominent in her fair hair.

Why was it so hard to breathe?

"Anne if it's a girl, Ace if it's a boy," his mother, _his mother_, announced. Her voice was so… so… "Our child, Gol D Ace."

He could stand to hear that name when it was said in her voice.

A doctor came over to examine him closely and told her something in a frigid tone. He probably knew who the father was.

He couldn't really tell what was going on as a small cacophony filled his ears and he was lifted out of his mother's arms and into the air. It hurt so much to breath he almost stopped to save himself the pain.

There was a needle in his arm — it seemed so much bigger compared to his infant body than it would have if he were an adult. Something smelled like medicine, and while he wanted to stay awake in hopes of seeing his mother for a little longer, he really couldn't control when his eyes closed and he fell into slumber.

He woke far away, on a ship. Breathing was an effort but it didn't hurt nearly as much as before. Gramps was in the room, sitting at a desk that looked utterly too small for him and doing paperwork diligently and seriously in an uncharacteristic way. If Ace had to guess, he would say the old (not as old as Ace was used to seeing him, but still old) man was only working to keep his mind off other things. Gramps' subordinates, however, did not seem to realise there were things their leader did not want to talk about.

"Sir?" a young Marine ventured from the door. "What are you going to do about the boy's health?"

Gramps shot Ace a forlorn look that dissolved into a rather distant smile when he saw the infant's eyes open and watching him. "The very best I can."

Ace didn't know what he meant until a long while later. A _very_ long while later.

He had once thought that his experience with death by starvation had been the longest time he had taken to die again, but either the universe was finally letting him off, or it was having particular trouble with however it wanted to kill him this time. Because he was _growing up._

A few years he had spent, by then; he was two when he learned what Gramps was saying, and what the big deal about his health was. It was quit simple, actually; due to his mother's twenty-month pregnancy, he had had a complication when he was born that made him very sickly.

It was something different than he had ever encountered, and he figured it was the universe's way of trying to take him down this time. But Gramps hadn't placed him with the bandits, for some reason. Probably due to his poor health, Gramps had asked Makino to take care of him in Fuchsia Village, where he would have quicker access to medicine and doctors.

He got sick every other month. Every time was easier than the last, and the doctor's praised him on his recovery, which he found strange, because the change was due to no action of his own.

He was three and a half years old and starting to forget that he had ever had another life when he was given the penultimate reminder of things long past.

A woman had appeared on the island with a swollen stomach, and came straight to Makino to tell her that she was due any day now. Ace could guess what she meant, and Makino seemed both overjoyed and immensely worried.

The woman had stayed with them for the next few weeks leading up to her delivery. Ace had few chances to talk to her, but he decided she must be the greatest woman in the world (after his own mother, of course) when he learned she was planning to name her child 'Lucille if it's a girl, Luffy if it's a boy.'

The woman — Mrs Monkey, he supposed — was a rather stern figure, but she adored children to the point of pressuring her husband to father one, and she was rather pleased when Ace stuck to her side like glue thereafter.

The actual day of delivery, he wasn't allowed in the room. He had to wait outside and endure Mrs Monkey's screaming for hours. When the screaming abated, he heard a baby's cry that he _knew_ was Luffy's and almost sobbed for joy.

He had been waiting a long time.

When the doctors checked over Mrs Monkey, he was able to creep in through the door and over to the small makeshift crib where Luffy lay.

_Luffy._

Darling, angelic Luffy was back and would be a part of his life again. He grinned down at his baby brother when the infant opened a curious eye to him, and decided that as soon as Luffy was old enough they would be going down into the forest to look for Sabo.

Maybe, just maybe, he really had a chance of having his family whole again.

**Bonus Level Unlocked**

**Congratulations!**

**. . .**

A/N: I feel like I should apologise for doing that to Ace. Sorry. Hopefully the ending makes up for it.  
Another one for the prompt exchange challenge done! This prompt was from WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED (cool username, by the way… hehe)


End file.
